Sovereign by Design: Scaling Trusted AI in India
In Partnership With
Overview
In India, Sovereign AI has moved from policy discussion to a buying decision. IDC research showed Indian organisations are ahead of their peers in Asia/Pacific when it comes to AI Sovereignty. They put more weight on local compute, local datasets and support for Indian languages. When Asia/Pacific organisations evaluate these solutions, security design, data residency and responsible AI now count for more than how well the model performs.
The DPDP Act, sector regulators such as RBI and SEBI, and the push to move AI from pilots to agentic AI at scale are raising a practical question for leaders. How do you keep control of your data, models and infrastructure without losing speed, cost discipline or access to the latest AI?
This closed-door roundtable organised by IDC and Oracle brings together senior technology leaders. They will share how they define sovereignty for their own organisations, where to draw the line between global and local, and how to make sovereignty something you can prove.
India Sets the Pace on Sovereign AI
India is moving from GenAI pilots to sovereign, agentic scale. IDC research shows Indian organisations are ahead of Asia/Pacific peers on AI sovereignty, with more focus on local compute, local datasets and Indian-language support. With over 60% of Asia/Pacific enterprises facing regulatory disruption to IT operations, and 55% of governments expected to adopt hybrid sovereign cloud by 2026, sovereignty works best when it is designed in from the start.
Key Learning Outcomes Include:
Understand what sovereign AI means in practice across data, models and infrastructure, and which workloads truly need sovereign controls.
Learn how leading organisations build audit trails, key ownership and model-change logs to meet DPDP Act and sector regulator expectations.
Explore architecture choices that keep data and AI under your control without slowing innovation, or raising costs.
Weigh the cost, compliance and control trade-offs of global, open and local models, and when fine-tuning beats building your own.
Hear peer approaches to scaling AI responsibly, from governance and skills to partner choices.
Agenda
Sovereign by Design: Scaling Trusted AI in India
Wed, Dec 9
Registration & Networking High Tea
Welcome Address by IDC
Rajiv Ranjan
Associate Research Director Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Domain, IDC
Sovereign by Design: Scaling Trusted AI in India
Explore how India can scale trusted AI through sovereign infrastructure, secure data ecosystems, and responsible innovation. Discuss strategies to balance data sovereignty, regulatory compliance, and AI-driven growth while building resilient, locally governed AI capabilities that strengthen India’s digital future.
Rajiv Ranjan
Associate Research Director Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Domain, IDC
Open Discussion Sovereign by Design: Scaling Trusted AI in India
An open discussion on how India can scale trusted AI while ensuring data sovereignty, security, and responsible innovation. Industry leaders will exchange perspectives on building secure AI ecosystems, navigating regulatory challenges, and balancing national priorities with global AI advancements.
Rajiv Ranjan
Associate Research Director Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Domain, IDC
K. Sugumaran
Vice President, Solutions Engineering, Hybrid Cloud Systems, Oracle
Summary & Close
Cocktail Dinner and Networking
Speakers
Rajiv Ranjan
Associate Research Director Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Domain
IDC
Read bio
Rajiv Ranjan
Based in the IDC Bangalore office, Rajiv Ranjan works as an Associate Research Director Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Domain with the Asia/Pacific team and leads the Future of Digital Infrastructure Research for India. Rajiv has a specific focus on cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) research program management. He manages the advisory assignments for IT vendors in the areas of cloud infrastructure strategy, go-to-market strategy, strategic marketing, and end-user insights across technologies and industry verticals. In a previous stint with IDC, Rajiv led the Asia/Pacific Enterprise Storage Infrastructure research practice.
Prior to joining IDC, Rajiv worked with Dell Technologies managing the product marketing assignments for the company’s storage portfolio for selected Asia/Pacific geographies. In this role, Rajiv managed the field marketing, product management, go-to-market, and marketing campaigns for its storage products, driving storage revenue and market share in the operating geographies. He has an overall 17 years of work experience in market research, product marketing, and sales/business development.
Rajiv is a management graduate from ITM group of institutions and has completed his Engineering degree in Telecommunications from the BMS college of Engineering, Bangalore.
Event Sessions
One Day Event 7:30 pm
Open Discussion Sovereign by Design: Scaling Trusted AI in India
An open discussion on how India can scale trusted AI while ensuring data sovereignty, security, and responsible innovation. Industry leaders will exchange perspectives on building secure AI ecosystems, navigating regulatory challenges, and balancing national priorities with global AI advancements.
One Day Event 7:05 pm
Sovereign by Design: Scaling Trusted AI in India
Explore how India can scale trusted AI through sovereign infrastructure, secure data ecosystems, and responsible innovation. Discuss strategies to balance data sovereignty, regulatory compliance, and AI-driven growth while building resilient, locally governed AI capabilities that strengthen India’s digital future.
One Day Event 7:00 pm
Welcome Address by IDC
K. Sugumaran
Vice President, Solutions Engineering, Hybrid Cloud Systems
Oracle
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K. Sugumaran
K. Sugumaran is Vice President, Solutions Engineering, Hybrid Cloud Systems at Oracle, where he leads the sales engineering and solutions architecture teams and drives technical sales strategy across Asia Pacific.
A seasoned industry veteran, Sugu has held senior roles across Oracle Direct Sales, Partner Sales, and Product Management. He has long championed multi- and hybrid-cloud solutions that power digital transformation across the region and is a strong advocate for the voice of the customer.
Before Oracle, Sugu held leadership positions at Novell, Netscape, America Online, Sun Microsystems, EMC, and Violin Memory.
Sugu holds B Sc (Hons), Computer Science, National University of Singapore (NUS), MBA from Cranfield School of Management, England, Diploma in Marketing – Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) and Executive Management training at University of Michigan (Ross Business School) & IESE Business School (Barcelona).
He is one of the elite Singaporeans to be awarded the prestigious European Union Fellowship to pursue Post-Graduate Studies in UK. Sugu did his early education at Raffles Institution in Singapore.
Sugu plays an active role in Community Services in Singapore.
Event Sessions
One Day Event 7:30 pm
Open Discussion Sovereign by Design: Scaling Trusted AI in India
An open discussion on how India can scale trusted AI while ensuring data sovereignty, security, and responsible innovation. Industry leaders will exchange perspectives on building secure AI ecosystems, navigating regulatory challenges, and balancing national priorities with global AI advancements.
In Partnership With
Oracle
Oracle has been operating in India for over 30 years. The company serves many companies in the private and public sectors. It employs 50000 professionals representing different business functions including sales, product development, support services and more. Oracle offers integrated suites of applications plus secure, autonomous infrastructure in the Oracle Cloud. Oracle’s mission is to help people see data in new ways, discover insights and unlock endless possibilities. The company operates two cloud regions in India, in Mumbai and Hyderabad. Both regions are empaneled by Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India (MeitY) as a cloud infrastructure solution provider for governments and public sector entities operating in India. Globally, Oracle Cloud offers services from 51 public cloud regions and 26 countries. Each Oracle Cloud region offers a consistent set of more than 150 cloud services designed to run any application, faster and more securely, for less. Oracle Cloud also offers a full suite of Oracle Cloud Applications and direct interconnections with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud for more complete support of customer cloud strategies.
Venue
